Most Americans support banning cellphones in school… [OC]

35 comments

1. Data Source: CivicScience InsightStore
   Visualization: Created with Infogram

2. big surprise the population of people who are using phones in school do not support banning phones in school

3. Ages 13 to 24 is a rather large bucket.

4. Ban cell phones and it’s back to playing Drug Wars or Bomberman on your TI-86.

5. In theory, but from what I know, once they start implementing it parents tend to start to push back because they can’t access their children 24/7 anymore.

6. Honestly the fact that only 42% of school kids outright oppose says a lot. And that 36% want them banned, that’s probably a lot of kids sick of the distractions/bullying/disturbances/etc. Tbh it was great when I went and they were banned, so many good times/friendships are formed when people aren’t staring at their phones in their prime brain development and social years. 

7. Odd that it’s banning cell phones and not cell phone use

8. My kids public school doesn’t allow cell phones. Every morning they are collected and kept at the front office. If a kid needs to contact their parents they can call them from there. At the end of the day the phones are returned. There are 800 students at this school.

   Edit to add some info: yes, this likely disincentivizes kids to bring a phone if they don’t need it – some kids absolutely do need it before and after school for a variety of reasons. Yes, there are consequences if a student is caught using a cell phone during school hours. This is in New Orleans and I’m sure the school is not the only one using such a system.

9. Let’s ban smart phones in school, and then give everyone a Razr. Parents can reach their kids if needed, kids can develop the stealth skills needed to text your friends without getting caught, everyone gets to experience the joy of someone’s ringtone unexpectedly going off in class.

10. Ban how? Do schools not still confiscate your phone if you have it out and give it back at the end of the day?

11. It’s funny. I saw something about this a couple weeks ago. Parents want cellphones banned in schools until it happens to their kid and they’re no longer able to check in on them throughout the day.

    For the record, I want cellphone use limited drastically at school.

12. I support banning smart phones. A regular old dumb phone is totally fine.

13. How about they ban guns to make it safe? Then kids can concentrate on learning not survival

14. I love that the main argument for phones at school seems to be because of school shootings. It’s surrealist.

15. Until they want their kid to have their phone for this one very special and very specific reason that doesn’t apply to everyone else (except it totally applies to everyone else) and if you try to stop us we’ll pull our kid and put them in a charter school so fuck you for trying to help them learn to focus or be responsible or independent for even a few minutes. 

16. “Most Americans support banning cellphones in school”

    Misleading. It’s a nonprobability survey. Doesn’t matter how many times you reweight your only-god-knows-how weights with a census. It is most definitely biased with low effective sample size.

17. I’d only support banning them in class, not at school entirely. that only leads to more people getting in trouble for no good reason

18. I wouldn’t ban them because emergencies happen. What I have seen is using an over the door shoe hanger to collect phones as kids come in for class and then they get their phones back when their work is finished.

    Also exemptions for kids that need their phone for things like monitoring their glucose or using a recording app for notes.

    Like I have an audio processing disorder mixed in with my ADHD and autism, so my school got me a Glean account and I use the phone app to record lectures and then the app makes a transcript I can read.

19. High School teacher here.

    Banning of cell phones in schools needs to happen. My district has implemented magnetically sealing pouches to keep phones in and it has failed incredibly so. Students found simplistic, brutish ways to open their pouches and access their phones and discovered which security guards are lax enough to not care in the mornings when they come in through the metal detectors.

    The complete banning of phones is the only way to combat this endemic. Students cannot pay attention when their phones are buzzing/going off so much. The fact that they *can* access their phones is enough to distract them. I would much rather deal with students talking to each other than engrossed in the doom scrolling.

    I understand the addiction, I myself am addicted to my phone. Screen time has ruined attention spans and if they’re not on their phones, they’re brick walls that are almost impossible to hold a discussion with more than 2 minutes (a generalization of course but one that is true for most students).

20. Growing up in the 2000s cellphones were always forbidden and could only be used outside of the classroom. Parents could always call the school in case of emergencies.

    Smartphones are so engrained in people’s brains that this topic is up for debate again.

21. I feel we should educate parents on enabling parental controls on their children’s phones.

22. I was against it because my kids are involved in a lot of extracurricular activities and we rely on phones to communicate whether they need to take a bus home or if we are going to pick them up. Now before anyone says “they should just take the bus home” – itks not that simple. They get bussed from the city to our local public school and we have to pick them up there. If we are unable to pick them up, they could be waiting in the rain or freezing ass cold for a long time.

    However, their school implemented a “no phones” policy in a very sane way – they allow phones, but they have to be put into a pouch on the wall at the beginning of each class.

23. My kids’ district did this starting last September. Students were up in arms for about 2 weeks but now the general consensus seems to be positive for students, parents and teachers.

24. im addicted to my phone in school and agree that we gotta ban them, cus i know im not even the worst case of it

25. I’m 25. I didn’t get my first phone until the end of 11th grade. I work in higher education now after receiving my masters in statistics.

    Please ban them.

26. my high school allowed phones but you would get in trouble if you used it in a non-emergency etc

27. When I was going to school, we had cells but we knew when to use them. That and we didn’t have socials then either. I understand WHY this is a thing, it’s a new age double-edged sword.

28. This is that meddling people do. Stop trying to control other people. If parents do t want to allow their kids phones then that’s on them but otherwise don’t make the decision for others

29. I’m curious how this data looks is you split adults at 40 or 45 years old. It seems to be newer parents of current kids that want them to have phones in school as well.

30. My kid’s teachers all expect students to have phones, and having a phone is kind of expected and assumed by the teachers. They even put up posters with QR codes for students to scan for assignments.

    … this is despite cellphones being banned in school… lol

31. When they can ban guns first, and then protect them from predatory teachers, then we can walk down and ban phones.

32. Do you support banning cellphones at works??

    Everyone supports “not in my neighborhood”

33. Yo parents who are “checking in” during school hours are just bad helicopter parents

34. There’s people in graduate level courses cheating on their phones to get degrees. It needs to stop.

35. It’s a no brainer in my mind.

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